Hi y’all. I’ve been off the board for a few weeks. My daughter, Grace, came down with Covid, she’s fine, just felt rough for a few days. However, it’s company policy that if a family member comes down with Covid, the employee has to be away from work for 5 days, then take a test. If negative, back to work. So, I tested negative, back to work on Monday..Tuesday, my coworker had it, we lost him for a week. I’ve been a bit busy…
Anyway, I couldn’t leave the house for a few days as it was possible that I had Covid, which means I couldn’t go out and get the ballast and tubes I need for the Grimmershorn. So I decided to build something else for the time being…an Italeri Vosper!!
Now, I have been wanting to do an RC conversion on an Italeri 1/35 scale kit for some time, but they aren’t cheap, and I don’t have a lot of experience with plastic models. Built a few as a kid, then found balsa and tissue and that was that. But…Amazon had the Vosper on sale for less than 100 dollars, and then a coupon for 20 percent off THAT!! Plus, I had the stock in my parts bin to fit it out, so I ordered it as part of my Christmas gifts and told my wife. She was quite pleased that I got something I liked and it was on sale! Yay!
I won’t bore y’all with too many details, the Italeri kit is nice and builds well. If I do another static conversion I have to learn to cut Styrene cleaner. I had a time cutting a hatch, used a frame, with a thin, fine cutoff wheel but I still melted the edges, which meant I had to clean up the edges and also use filer strips to get the hatch to look and fit properly. There’s a build log from about 6 years ago where a member built one up, I folles his log, but I put my hatch further aft, omitted the water calling and used a higher kv motor and a 2 cell lipo vs a 3 cell. It’s single shaft, I had a 3mm shaft and tube from a kit where I had used a 4mm in its place, a small, older Graupner rudder, and a metal motor mount bonded to the hull. The hull is one piece save the transom, I used 1/8th reinforcements and plenty of epoxy at the joints..don’t wanna lose that🤣
I made one glaring error, I cut the stuffing tube slot too far aft, so I applied a scab patch of plasticard inside, heated up a scrap plastic spruce with a heat gun, stuffed that in the slot, sandis it down and filled it.
I think it’s going to be a nice boat, I did a test run with the portholes taped up and the deck screwed down but not bonded. At high speed she can be a bit squirrelly, and I got a bit of water in the hull. Second run I used full throttle only in a straight line, limited maneuvers to 3/4 throttle, she handles well and much less water inside.
I’m almost done, I have about 2-3 hours of painting and installation of a few more details, she’ll maiden this Sunday. After that, it’s time to ballast the Grimmershorn.
Cash